Contemporary Irish Authors You Should be Reading

Ireland has blessed the literary world with talents of Joyce, Wilde, Beckett, Shaw, Synge, Yeats, Swift and many more. Those are tough shoes to fill, and fortunately, the Emerald Isle continues to produce a steady crop of skilled storytellers.

We asked our readers to tell us their favorite contemporary Irish authors…

Thanks this is a great list! I see a bunch I haven’t read and some that I had forgotten! I listen to a lot of them as audio books because I am in the car so much. The Stuart Nevelle stories, and Erin Hart are among my favorites too. The narrators of these are great!

What a wonderful list of authors! One of my favorites is Sebastian Barry. If you have to chose one of his books go with ‘The Secret Scripture’ . Reading historical fiction, is often the best way to learn while being entertained at the same time.

A wonderful list of Irish authors and their books. Looking forward to reading them and introducing them to the members if the Jane Austin book club here in Ferns, Co. Wexford. I think Felicity Hayes-McCoy and her book ‘The house on an Irish Hillside’ deserves a place in the list of Irish authors and their books.

I found a few on this list that I can add to my reading list! Thanks for retweeting! I also really am addicted to Adrian McGinty who has a new one coming out, and Ken Bruen. You can find Ken Bruen’s Jack Taylor series on Netflix too!

She is a New Author that lives in Dundalk, Co. Louth She in her late 20’s and is working on the squeal

This book is a great read and for her 1st novel I think its brilliant – she writes long books with detailed plots and complex characters I loved this book right to the end and can’t wait until her next book comes out this year- I hope.

I’d add Fintan Vallely’s books on irish music — maybe a touch academic for the general reader but worth looking at — and Niall Williams and Christine Breen’s books about making a life in the west of Ireland –she’s Irish American, he’s Irish, they both lived in the US for a time and then came to rural Clare in the 1980s

Consider Billy O’Callaghan, a Cork writer. His third collection of short stories, ‘The Things We Lose, The Things We Leave Behind’ is brilliant and beautiful. The title story won the Irish Book Award for best short story of 2013.

I’ve been in a bit of a Sebastian Barry reading frenzy for so long now and of course absolutely in love with everything he’s written, but wanting to find other Irish authors.

Unfortunately, while in Ireland this May past I didn’t get as far as Sligo so I wasn’t able to follow the footsteps as in Sebastian Barry’s writings. Had I finished Annie Dunne before the trip I probably would’ve sought out the Wicklow town where most of the story was based.

If anybody else can suggest another Irish writer who writes in the same style and prose as Barry it would be appreciated. Colm Toibin is the closet I’ve seen to this. In the meanwhile, I’ll continue the research.

While many of the writers listed above would be on my own list of favourite contemporary Irish writers, please allow me to toss my own name into the pile. My 2012 collection of short stories, Postcard from a Pigeon and Other Stories ASIN: B007CK9LY2 is available for download from Amazon and other major ebook retailers, as is my recently published crime novel, Tito’s Dead B00JQC2ODY

Even though a few years deceased I would add Brian Moore, who along with Colman Toibin, is an absolute favorite (of mine). I have read just about all of both writers’ works and will likely go back & do so again. JQ